What the Virgin Martyrs Really Teach Us

What the Virgin Martyrs really teach us The lives of Sts. Cecilia, Agatha, Agnes, Anastasia and Lucy have resonated across centuries. These female virgin martyrs of the early Church are all named in the Roman Canon — Eucharistic Prayer I in the Mass — and have been venerated by the Christian faithful for nearly two millennia. “The stories of the virgin martyrs all point to — all represent — the story of Jesus. That is what makes them holy,” said Father Michael Fuller, the executive director of the Secretariat of Doctrine and Canonical Affairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Many female virgin martyrs have been canonized for dying in defensum castitatis (“defending their chastity”). A notable and well-known example is St. Maria Goretti, who was 11 years old when was she was fatally stabbed 14 times on July 5, 1902, while resisting her would-be rapist. On her deathbed, she forgave her assailant and said she wanted him in heaven with her. St. Cecilia (2nd-3rd Century A.D.) Born into a rich Roman family, Cecilia was to be given in marriage to a young man named Valerian. But desiring to remain a virgin for Christ, Cecilia wore sackcloth, fasted and invoked the saints, angels and virgin martyrs to protect herself. According to legend, her example converted Valerian, who respected her desire to remain a virgin. Valerian, his brother and Cecilia were killed by the prefect when they refused to offer a sacrifice to the Roman gods. The executioner is said to have unsuccessfully attempted to behead Cecilia, who died three days later. An early Roman church dedicated to Cecilia’s memory was built in the fourth century in Rome’s Trastevere section. She is considered the patroness of musicians. Church officials exhumed her body in 1599 and found her to be incorrupt. Her feast day is Nov. 22. In September, the Church beatified two 20th-century women — Blesseds Veronica Antal of Romania and Anna Kolesarova of Slovakia — who were killed while fighting off men who tried to sexually assault them. Properly understood and carefully presented, the ancient and more recently canonized virgin martyrs bear great value for evangelization. “This is because — like all the old legends of the saints — their stories were told in such a way that the hearer would see Christ better,” said Father Fuller, author of the book “The Virgin Martyrs: A Hagiographical and Mystagogical Interpretation.” Father Fuller told Our Sunday Visitor that the virgin martyrs, with their stories of heroic selflessness, nonviolent resistance to evil and single-minded focus on Jesus, all point to Christ as the center of their lives. “Martyrs retell of the victory of the cross,” Father Fuller said. Worshippers venerate the relics of St. Maria Goretti at St. John Cantius Church in Chicago in 2015. The major relics, which are virtually all of the skeletal remains of the saint, known as the “patroness of purity,” visited nearly 20 states on a U.S. “pilgrimage of mercy” in the fall of 2015. CNS photo by Karen Callaway, Chicago Catholic Virtue of love However, the virgin martyrs’ stories sometimes have been told — by well-meaning people — in a manner that would have some believe that those young women were saints mainly because they managed not to be raped. To modern ears, St. Maria Goretti’s martyrdom can send the unintended message that a young girl or woman who survives a sexual assault would have been better off being killed for the sake of purity and the state of her soul. “It is absolutely true that, up until very recently, it would be easy to get the message from the Church that a girl’s value is in her virginity, and once she lost her virginity, she now has less value,” said Simcha Fisher, a Catholic author and blogger. In 2015, Fisher wrote a controversial blog, entitled “Maria Goretti Didn’t Die for Her Virginity,” in which she argued that the young Italian girl was more worried about her attacker, Alessandro Serenelli, and his salvation than she was on preserving her virginity, for which the young saint often has been praised for protecting. St. Agatha (A.D. 231-251) One of the Church’s highly venerated virgin martyrs, Agatha is believed to have been born around A.D. 231 in Sicily to a noble family.Devout from a young age, Agatha became a consecrated virgin, but that did not stop men from desiring her and making unwanted advances. One of her would-be suitors, a diplomat named Quintianus, had Agatha arrested for her persistent refusals. As her judge, Quintianus had Agatha imprisoned in a brothel, but that move failed to break Agatha. She was later tortured, stretched on a rack, burned with torches, whipped, had her breasts cut off, was stripped naked and rolled over hot coals. But those tortures never led Agatha to apostatize. She died in prison around A.D. 251. She is the patroness of nurses and breast cancer patients. Her feast day is Feb. 5. “In the case of Maria Goretti, and this is something I always try to point out to people, she didn’t say, ‘No, spare my virginity. Don’t do this to me,'” Fisher told OSV. “Maria was basically asking Alessandro to spare himself. She was saying that it was a mortal sin for him to rape her, and that he shouldn’t do this to himself. She was demonstrating the greatest virtue, which is love.” Some of Fisher’s critiques have been echoed by other Catholic female writers, including Dawn Eden Goldstein, a theologian and author of “The Thrill of the Chaste” and “My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints.” “With the saints, they’re not just martyred for the witness of one moment. They’re martyred for their witness of an entire life,” Goldstein told OSV. “It has to be proven that they had heroic virtue, and Maria showed heroic virtue, not merely in resisting rape but in her attitude toward life and her attitude toward her union with God.” Father Carlos Martins, a Companion of the Cross priest who is an expert biographer on St. Maria Goretti, told OSV that it is St. Maria Goretti’s heroic virtue that has inspired the faithful, including victims of sexual assault. “Many have told me that hearing the story of her witness brought them from a status of being merely someone’s victim, an object that was used and thrown away, to being able to view their attacker with the love of God,” Father Martins said. “‘Father, I am now able to forgive my attacker,’ many have told me or written me. ‘I forgive him, and I pity him.'” Father Martins, who is the director of the Treasures of the Church ministry, a traveling collection of thousands of sacred relics, also said that St. Maria Goretti, in the forgiveness she extended to Alessandro, “reveals to victims that victimhood need not define them.” “Forgiveness was the way in which Maria, who for all intents and purposes appeared completely powerless in the face of her attacker, entered into a mystery: a complete and total imitation the one she loved: Christ, who is our Passover Lamb,” Father Martins said. “Yet it was this very act that empowered her, for in becoming configured to the Mystery of Christ, he was able to manifest through her in a dazzling display of redemptive power.” Historical context In the Church, especially in its earliest days, Father Fuller said virginity and purity were understood as great spiritual gifts. Both were praised as some of the highest ways a person could imitate Christ and devote themselves to serving him. Father Fuller added that he wrote his book on the virgin martyrs to better understand why the Church has honored them for almost 2,000 years. “They were venerated because they were martyrs — saints who imitated Christ even by dying,” Father Fuller said. “In each of their stories, their virginity and promise not to marry was only the beginning of their story.” St. Lucy (A.D. 283-304) According to tradition, Lucy was born to rich and noble parents in Syracuse. At a young age, she consecrated her virginity to God and hoped to distribute her dowry to the poor. Concerned for her, Lucy’s mother arranged for her to be betrothed to a young man from a wealthy pagan family. Legend has it that St. Agatha, who had been martyred around 50 years earlier, appeared to Lucy in a dream to tell her that her mother would be cured from a bleeding disorder. In thanksgiving, Lucy had her mother distribute a greater portion of her riches among the poor. The news angered Lucy’s betrothed, who reported her to the governor. Lucy was sentenced to death for refusing to burn a sacrifice to the emperor’s image. She was killed by the sword, and is the patroness of the blind, related to a legend about the governor ordering her eyes to be gouged out. Her feast day is Dec. 13. To better understand their evangelistic value, some historical context is important. The age of the virgin martyrs lies between the apostolic era and the time of the Church Fathers. Knowing the social and cultural backdrop of the early Roman Empire in which they lived also can help one to appreciate exactly what the Church honors in the virgin martyrs. “Roman law forbade a woman to remain unmarried. She was property of a male, either of her own father or of her husband,” Father Martins said. “She had to marry.

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